As the career official responsible for the day-to-day
management of Import Administration, I perform many
roles: making the budgetary ends meet;
acting as policy adviser plenipotentiary; being an “executive sponsor” of
various projects; and serving frequently as a diplomatic counselor or empathetic
ear to our organization’s staff and external stakeholders.

Import Administration’s core mission is to
administer our nation’s antidumping and countervailing duty laws, which provide
a remedy–typically, via a special import tariff–to help U.S. industries
that are injured as a result of unfairly traded imports. These remedies are determined through
quasi-judicial investigations conducted under the close scrutiny of the courts
and the World Trade Organization. While
the process is sanctioned by international trade rules and receives broad
support from the Congress, the outcome of any given investigation can displease
the domestic industry, the foreign exporters, the foreign government(s) and–in many cases–all of the above. You
have to have a thick skin to do my kind of work. But the work itself can be intellectually
fascinating, impinging upon some of the most controversial trade policy issues
and of make-or-break importance to the survival of many U.S. businesses and the
livelihoods of many Americans.

How did I get here? I was born in northeastern Ohio and grew up in Indiana and Illinois,
graduating from Bradley University in Peoria, IL, with a B.A. in French and
international relations. I had no clue
when I was in high school that one could specialize in such a field, but I
think that my sense of being “different” led me to explore that possibility and
the options that it might present. That
led to a junior year of college at the Sorbonne in Paris, which in turn
convinced me that I must continue in this field and find another chance at
further study abroad. I was accepted by
the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies M.A. program and packed my
bags for a year at SAIS’s center in Bologna, Italy, with my second year
bringing me to Washington–my home ever since. I can see more clearly now that my scholarly interests spoke to the
calling that I had to understand and interact with people of different
cultures, but the experience of living abroad was profoundly transformative in
liberating me from my own, often self-imposed limitations as a gay man.

Today, I look back at more than 30 years in international
trade law and policy at both the International Trade Administration and the
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. To be sure, there were some stressful and frustrating times, but on the
whole I have learned and hopefully shared a lot of knowledge, experience and
wisdom along the way. Having grown up in
the Midwest and been in the first college-educated generation of an upwardly mobile
middle class family that contributed to and depended upon our country’s vibrant
manufacturing base, I am both pained and moved to action by the struggle of so
many people of that same background today.
I hope that the hard work that I and my colleagues in Import
Administration perform every day to try to provide the proverbial “level
playing field” for U.S. manufacturers and workers offers some measure of
support to the folks that are still struggling, as well as to the President’s
efforts to lay the groundwork for an America “Built to Last”.

I feel privileged to have been given this opportunity to
tell a little of my own story as part of LGBT Pride Month. Over the course of my life, so much has
changed for the positive in our society and its treatment of its LGBT
citizens. Some days, it feels to me as
if the change has moved more quickly than I can process–or fully trust. But I also know that there still are hundreds
if not thousands of LGBT youth across our country that are withdrawn into
worlds of deceit, depression and thoughts of suicide. And I can see my adolescent self among
them. My advice to young LGBT Americans
considering a career in my or any field is to dig deep to understand what
brings you bliss in life and to find the adventurousness and tenacity needed to
get you there. Most importantly, I have
learned that life truly is more about giving than receiving. If you give seriously of your time, energy,
intellect and heart, you will receive a world of blessings–perhaps not the
ones that you aimed for, but blessings even more exciting and meaningful for
you.